Best Settings for the Insta360 X4 & x5
- gear4greatness
- Dec 4, 2024
- 5 min read
Updated: Nov 18
🎥 Best Settings for the Insta360 X4 & X5
Whenever I’m out shooting with the Insta360 X4 🎥 or the X5 🚀, I always come home feeling like I’m carrying more than just footage — I’m carrying these little pockets of lived moments that only a 360° camera can capture. There’s something about shooting with these cameras that changes how you move through the world. You stop thinking in “front” and “behind” and start thinking in moments, in space, in energy — the way a street bends, the way the sky opens up, the way a bike ride feels when the wind hits your jacket and you know the camera is seeing everything you can’t.
The X4 has this scrappy, ready-for-anything attitude. It’s compact, rugged, and never feels fragile, like the kind of camera I can just grab and go without thinking twice. When I film with it in 8K, there’s always this little moment on playback where I just shake my head thinking, “How is something this small giving me this much detail?” And then when I switch over to the X5, the whole mood shifts. The X5 feels like the camera that wants you to slow down, to notice more, to think cinematically. The replaceable lenses, the bigger battery, the way PureVideo AI softens out the low-light noise — it all lets me push deeper into scenes I wouldn’t even attempt with older 360 cameras. 🌌✨
As I move between settings out in the real world, the cameras kind of guide me. When I'm going for pure quality, I always end up back at 8K 30fps. There’s something special about the way that framerate feels in 360 — smooth, not rushed, almost documentary-like. When I’m filming action or biking fast across Provencher Bridge 🚲 with the wind peeling past me, the cameras almost nudge me toward 5.7K 60fps. It just feels right. The motion stays clean, the reframing stays sharp, and the whole scene becomes easier to shape later in Studio. With stabilization on, the horizon doesn’t even flinch — it’s like the camera refuses to admit I was bouncing over cracked pavement.
Low light is always where most cameras fall apart, but the X5 changes that experience. Walking downtown at night, neon reflections on the pavement, cars brushing by, people’s faces lit from storefronts — the X5 holds the shadows together in a way the X4 can’t always match. I can feel PureVideo AI working in the footage, almost like digital breathing, smoothing noise gently without killing the mood. I love knowing I can slow the shutter down a bit, let the scene breathe, and not worry that the whole thing will turn into mush. The X4 still holds up, especially in HDR, but the X5 feels born for nights like that.
Photos are another world entirely. Shooting 72MP 360 photos with these cameras always gives me that “I want to print this” feeling. RAW + JPEG lets me bring out details in ways I didn't expect — the sky, the texture in buildings, the quiet little corners you don’t even notice when you're standing there. Even low-light photos on the X5 feel more intentional, like you’re sculpting light instead of fighting it.
And then there’s the creative stuff — TimeShift, timelapses, hyperlapses — the moments where you stop being just a shooter and start becoming a storyteller. When I do a TimeShift on a long bike ride or a fast walk through the city, it feels like compressing the day’s energy into this compact little sequence that somehow carries every step, every sound, every feeling. Timelapses in 8K hit differently too; clouds move like ink drifting through water, and sunset transitions feel cinematic in a way that almost surprises me every time I play them back.
Even vlogging with these cameras feels fun. I love using 5.7K because it gives me so much flexibility later. The invisible selfie stick always adds that floating, drone-like feeling, and every time I see it I think, “This is the future we were promised.” Wind reduction helps save audio on the bad days, and on the X5 the longer battery life means I can talk to the camera for ages without thinking about it.
When the footage finally lands in Insta360 Studio, everything comes together. ProRes when I want to edit seriously, H.265 when I need to move fast, proxies when I don’t want my computer to groan under 8K. And when the clip finally exports — whether it’s widescreen for YouTube or vertical for TikTok — it always feels like I managed to carve something meaningful out of the raw moment. Something I lived, then shaped, then shared. 🎥🌄✨
Best Settings for the Insta360 X4
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Final Thoughts
What I love about the X4 and X5 is the way they change how I experience a moment. When I’m holding one of these cameras, I’m not just filming — I’m paying attention. I’m noticing the light on the water, the way the wind moves across the street, the rhythm of people walking by. There’s a sense of awareness that comes with shooting 360, like you’re capturing the entire space around you instead of just pointing at one thing. It makes the world feel bigger, fuller, more alive.
The X4 is like that reliable friend you bring on every adventure — tough, easygoing, always ready to go. It lets me enjoy the moment without worrying about breaking expensive gear or messing up settings. And the X5… the X5 is the friend who brings out the filmmaker in me. It makes me slow down, look deeper, set up shots differently, and find the story in the moment instead of just the motion. Its low-light strength, its AI clean-up, its modular lenses — it’s a camera that grows with me as a creator.
Every time I shoot with these cameras, I’m reminded of why I create in the first place. Not for perfection, not for numbers, not for the algorithm — but for the feeling of capturing something honest and shaping it into something beautiful later. These cameras let me keep those moments intact. They let me preserve the day exactly the way it felt, and that’s something I’ll never take for granted.
If anything, the more I shoot with both the X4 and X5, the more I realize how much of my storytelling comes from moments I didn’t even plan — the unexpected angles, the reflections, the motion around me. And maybe that’s the whole point of 360 cameras: they capture life the way we actually experience it — in every direction at once.